MOON LOVERS: SCARLET HEART RYEO
One can say with some accuracy that what most romantic couples
forget is romantic fantasies and spells would wear off eventually. When the thrills
end with a falling-out, they might conveniently wipe everything from their
memory. But, Gwangjong and Hae Soo couldn’t be accused of that.
Wang Jung and Hae Soo’s wedding day arrived. The palanquin took the 21st century woman away from the Cheondeokjeon palace. When she arrived at Wang Jung’s
residence, the Fourteenth Prince offered his hand to help her out of her
palanquin. It was a poignant moment for her. The memory of Wang So's outstretched hand on one particular birthday came back to haunt her. That night the Fourth Prince had made
some strange howling noises below her window. When she went out to meet him,
Wang So had stretched out his hand to help her down the short flight of stairs.
It was the night when he brought her with him to look at the stars. He had also
invited her to meet him at the prayer tower the next day with the intention
of proposing marriage to her. But, unfortunately, he had been forced to take a child
bride, King Hyejong’s daughter.
Gwangjong. Although their world had split apart, the ghosts of her past were hot on Hae Soo's heels. Curiously, she couldn’t live with Gwangjong and she couldn’t live
without him. It was obviously a contradiction. But, she couldn't forget him.
She kept mementoes that reminded her of him. She still had in her possession the Tang poem that Gwangjong had sent her to explain that he had been pushed into a predicament; it was his marriage to Hyejong’s young daughter. In fact, she was obssessed with it. Out of old habit, she made imitations of the poem in his Chinese calligraphic style. She even painted images of Wang So on rocks or paper while she was with Wang Jung, who was patient with her and seemed to indulge her every whim. 
Gwangjong had spies placed in Wang Jung’s residence to prove to
himself that Hae Soo and Wang Jung’s marriage was just a farce or rather, a marriage of
convenience. But, the reports stated otherwise. The Fourteenth Prince put on
a grand pretence of demonstrating his love for his new consort when he spotted prying eyes. It was a hollow personal triumph. But, was he trying to provoke Gwangjong’s petty jealousy?
The spy's cover was blown but he didn't know any better. He made his reports based on his superficial observations. Gwangjong was more than taken aback upon reading the reports. In fact, he exploded with rage. Hae Soo had kept Wang Jung company while he practised his martial arts and lovingly wiped his brows. They even held hands.
  
He had every reason to be concerned about the cavorting couple. What surprised Choi Ji Mong was the king couldn’t help but take it upon himself to personally check up on the married couple. He spied with his very own eyes that Wang Jung had paid careful attention to Hae Soo’s health. Unknown to him, she was carrying their baby. The Fourteenth Prince had even picked her up and carried her lovingly in his arms.
  
Gwangjong’s jealousy drove him to spy on them that night. He was mystified that Wang Jung and Hae Soo were together in her bed
chamber; he heard their happy voices and peals of laughter. Every
lover in his right mind would have been insanely jealous. Gwangjong's imagination ran riot. There was no question in the king’s mind that Hae Soo and Wang Jung had consummated their marriage.
 He fulminated about their behaviour and stirred himself into such a rage that he declared to Choi Ji Mong that he didn’t want any more reports about the married couple.  
But, he was wrong about them. Shielded from the realities of the world, all Hae Soo wanted was to forget everyone except for her
memories of Gwangjong and herself. She longed for him; she missed him dearly.
She imagined that he was with her when she was practising her Chinese
calligraphy or drawing his portraits on small rocks. She was evidently lost
in her languid romantic fantasies of her king.
Gwangjong was ignorant of the fact that she had given birth to their daughter six months later. It was a top secret. Hae
Soo had been discreet about her pregnancy because she didn’t
want her daughter to grow up in the palace, a web of conspiracies and intrigue.
It seems some people eventually
come to their senses only when they are at death’s door. Hae Soo realised that she was
dying and had written a letter to Gwangjong, requesting to see him one last
time. Probably, she wanted to hear from his lips that he still loved her or,
at least, had forgiven her.
However, Wang Jung made the
mistake of inserting her letter into a new envelope to avoid palace gossip. It was
petty of the Fourteenth Prince to bother about what people thought about her
calligraphic style which bore an uncanny resemblance to that of Gwangjong’s. It was just natural that when Gwangjong
saw Wang Jung’s name on the envelope, he had refused to open it. The Fourteenth Prince had been making a nuisance of himself by regularly
criticizing Gwangjong’s rule. It irritated the king to be on the receiving
end of disparaging correspondence from his younger brother. Gwangjong neither read the
letter nor received the special messenger sent to deliver the letter to him.
Hae Soo sent him letter after
letter under the illusion that the king would come to see her. But, her letters
were met with silence because of Wang Jung’s unwitting interference. She
languished in her despair.
 Finally, she abandoned all hope of seeing Gwangjong one last time. It was clear that she was near death. She was disheartened by Gwangjong's heartlessness. She yearned to see him for the last time but he seemed to be unforgiving. Did he hate her that much?
It was all Wang Jung’s fault. If
Wang Jung had the heart and the brains, he would have broken all the exile rules
to go personally to see Gwangjong, his blood brother.
Even if he had invited the most
wonderful musicians to ease Hae Soo into the next world, it would not have made any difference to her. All she wanted was to see the love of her life before she passed
on.
When the singer sang a song
about her, memories of the past played like a tape recorder in her mind.
Wang Jung asked her, ‘You’ll remember me, won’t you?’ Her soft whisper was, ‘I’ll forget you. I’ll forget everything,
even in my dreams. All of you.’ Her startling honesty must have saddened
Wang Jung. She leaned against the prince who cradled her lovingly. Her life slowly
drained out of her and then the next moment, she was gone.
Hae Soo seemed to have been
pushed into the dark recesses of Gwangjong’s heart. He seemed to have forgotten
her. When news of her demise was conveyed to him, his reaction was one of shock and disbelief. It took moments for the truth to hit home. Did Hae Soo hate him so much that
she did not want him to know that she was dying? No, she had sent him letters
but he had not read them, believing that they were letters of complaint from
Wang Jung.
  
Her last letter was poignant.
Life is like a dream.
Right and Wrong. Love and Hate.
They all get buried with the
passage of time and leave quietly without any trace.
Are you still angry over love
and holding on to your resentment?
The opposite of ‘Love’ is not ‘Hate’.
It is ‘Throwing Someone Away’.
I left you with ‘Hate’ instead
of ‘Love’.
I wondered to myself whether I had left you to rest in comfort.
I was constantly worried.
When you threw everything away to stand by my side in the rain,
When you threw your body in the way of the flying arrow to
protect me,
I cannot forget you now.
I long for you.
I also miss you.
However, I cannot go to you.
I hope we can meet again in the garden.
I wait for you to come every day.
I have grown weary of the heartlessness of a kind man.
From the letter, it dawns on the audience that Hae Soo
regretted leaving him. He, on many occasions, had been willing to sacrifice
his life to protect her and yet, she was unable or refused to understand his
predicament in the turbulent Goryeo world.
She dismissed him from her life in exchange for the luxury of living in peace, comfort and tranquillity. She was not desirous of sharing the problems that
accompanied his kingship. The last verse shows that she did not understand
him fully. He was not heartless.
If there'd ever been a lover who embodied all-consuming passion and selfless love, it was Gwangjong. His face and eyes expressed his grief more
eloquently than any words. The king raced to Wang Jung’s residence, hoping against
hope, to see her face one last time. But the painful truth was, by the time
he arrived, she had already turned into ashes. Her corpse, like that of her cousin
sister, Lady Hae, had probably been burnt on a funeral pyre – the Buddhist way.
What was left were her ashes in an urn. Tears gleamed in Gwangjong's eyes and spilled over. Slamming Wang Jung, Gwangjong rebuked him for his foolish mistake of writing his own name on the envelopes
of Hae Soo's letters.
  
In the aftermath of Hae Soo’s death, the king and Wang Jung
fought over her funeral urn. It seemed for a moment that the king was a considerable
danger to Wang Jung. Gwangjong won the battle; Baek Ah advised their younger
brother to stop the conflict as he should know who Hae Soo wanted to be with.
But, unknown to the king, Wang Jung had used some of the ashes to make a celadon ornament as a keepsake.
    
Not long after, Choi Ji Mong, decided to leave the palace; he
could not be persuaded to stay.
Many of Gwangjong’s brothers had died. Jeongjong, who had slithered
into power, had killed Wang Mu and Wang Eun but he died young.
The ambitious and corrupt Wang Won did not mend his wicked
ways. The evil prince was increasingly difficult to ignore. Gwangjong refrained from the unnecessary use of
violence; Wang Won was punished to drink poison for treason. Hae Soo’s last
instruction to Baek Ah had been to hand Chae Ryung’s final letter, which was
written in her own blood, to him. The words of his deceased spy were the
retributive justice that he deserved.
 
Queen Yeon Hwa was perplexed by Gwangjong’s chilly indifference
towards Wang Ju, their eldest son’s birthday.
The palace conspiracies and the proliferation of enemies that
punctuated Gwangjong’s reign had caused him to descend into paranoia. The king
had launched a series of purges against his foes, real and imagined.
Heunghwa, King Hyejong’s son, and Gyeongchunwon, King Jeongjong’s son who had
cast an avaricious eye on the throne were killed without compunction. One could imagine the degree of his paranoia because it was
rumoured that he even mistrusted his eldest son, Wang Ju, who was only 5-years
old at that time.
Were the historians who recorded Goryeo’s history prejudiced against Gwangjong?
Gwangjong umleashed his anger on Yeon Hwa for her hypocrisy. He
made it cyrstal-clear that he understood the nature of his enemies who hid
their true selves behind invisible masks. Was she shocked to learn that she
and her son had aroused his suspicion that they might one day try to topple
him?
(According to history, Wang
Ju, who was confirmed as the Crown Prince in the year of his birth, would
succeed him and become Gyeongjong, Goryeo’s fifth king. One wonders why Gyeongjong
avoided politics and the royalty upon his ascension to the throne.)
It was a mistake to underestimate a queen who had been scorned.
Yeon Hwa couldn’t stop herself from passing snide remarks about Gwangjong’s
policy of emancipating slaves. She thought that it was preposterous that he
had been influenced by Hae Soo’s conviction that everyone was equal. Yeon Hwa's resentment was obvious when she asked, ‘Do
you think I didn’t know?’
Gwangjong’s nonchalance took tensions to a new level. So, what if she did? ‘Would
it change anything?’ was his smart retort. He could not be bothered with
her opinions. He had cold-shouldered her.
Frustrated,
the manipulative queen couldn’t help but have the last word. ‘Now that I think about it, I can
understand why Hae Soo left.’
The stinging remark hit bullseye. A flicker of pain crossed his
eyes.
On the day of Hae Soo’s death anniversary, Gwangjong went to
the place where he and Hae Soo were the happiest. The doltap. He wasn’t able
to purge Hae Soo from his thoughts. It was not a coincidence that Wang Jung had
also dropped in at the place. Despite having been forced into exile, he had
brought Gwangjong and Hae Soo’s love child to commemorate the event in the
palace. The young girl had accidentally knocked her head against Gwangjong’s body.
It was reminiscent of the day Wang So had whispered to Hae Soo that ‘She was his person.’ The memory of
that special moment had burned into his
brain.
 
The king’s curiosity was aroused by the hair brooch of the child which was uncannily familiar. It resembled the one he had given to Hae Soo. Gwangjong learnt that the young girl was his daughter but Wang Jung explained that Hae Soo did not want the girl to be raised in the palace - a fearsome place. The king realised that it would be in his best interests if he released Wang Jung from his exile. The Fourteenth Prince was invited to
visit the palace as often as he wished.
It was a poignant moment. It must have been heart-breaking for the
audience to watch Gwangjong walk away in despair from his daughter, the
offspring of his union with Hae Soo.
Undaunted by Wang Wook’s failure to be king, Queen Hwangbo was harbouring
hopes that his son would be next in line to the throne. It should come as no surprise
that the conniving queen had wrangled an invitation from Gwangjong to Prince
Wang Ju’s birthday party. The sad and tired Wang Wook, whose life had been lacklustre, wasn't impressed; he didn’t want his children
to go to the palace. But, Queen Hwangbo stressed that he should not lose
sight of the bigger picture. She was determined to make his son, Chi, king. Her
words revealed an overambitious queen bent on making kings from her
bloodline.
Chi would succeed King
Gyeongjong, his brother-in-law, as the sixth king and take the name, Seongjong.
When Baek Ah reported to Gwangjong, that Wang Wook, his
greatest adversary had passed away, it didn’t give the
king any satisfaction. Wang Wook’s mistake of epic proportion was to oppose
the king. Probably to his vast relief, he had emerged from his struggles almost
unscathed. Gwangjong had kept his promise to Hae Soo not to harm him.
Baek Ah, his previous staunch ally, did not want to stay by
Gwangjong's side and continued to lead the wasteful life of a lonely wanderer
who came and went as he pleased.
Gwangjong, drained of emotion, realised that it was really
lonely at the top and he lived the rest of his life out, shackled by the
burdens of his empire and wallowing in his sorrow. But, to his credit, the
emperor had kept his wits around him and he had gone to great lengths to
ensure the stability of his empire.
At the end of his life, there was another solar eclipse. The
skies grew grey and dark. It might not be a strange sight to Gwangjong. It
was a stark reminder of the fateful day that, when he galloped furiously back to
Songak to be with his family, he had also encountered a
similar ominous sight. The world had gone darker and darker and the young
prince Wang So had stood on a hill top in the eerie semi darkness of the eclipse.
The significance of the solar eclipse is probably what the drama is all about, unless you'd like to think otherwise. Emperor Gwangjong had eclipsed every one of his brothers,
including Wang Wook, the Eighth Prince, whose name means ‘The Rising Sun’.
The end for Gwangjong was near. The ending of his life in Goryeo rolled to the beginning. Perhaps, as Gwangjong lay dying, images of his life unravelled in his mind from the present to the past or the other way around. Life, with its twists and turns, would lead a person ultimately to the end. 
The ending was the beginning. The ending of life was the
beginning of a new life over the other side.
Wang So, the determined horse rider who was racing towards
home, was stunningly silhouetted against the solar eclipse. Other riders
follow. That was the beginning as we know it about Wang So’s most amazing story.
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BACK TO THE 21st CENTURY
Go Ha Jin had been transported back to the 21st
century. Having woken up up from her 1-year coma, Go Ha Jin began a new life.
A male expert on Goryeo products was elaborating on Goryeo cosmetic
culture. His eager audience were told that So Kung, the Song
Dynasty writer, had even travelled to Goryeo. The Goryeons could go to Byeongnando, a thriving international
trading port, to purchase things from Bulgaria. It was amazing that the
Goryeons could create make-up from roses.
THE TWIST IN THE TALE. Every member of the audience had
expected Go Ha Jin to meet Gwangjong in the 21st century. Another
time, another place. But instead, she met Choi Ji Mong, the Royal Astronomer.
She did not recognise him but, did he recognise her? He told her that her
family or surname name ‘Go’ was ‘Hae’ in the Goryeo era.
 
Go Ha Jin disclosed that coincidentally they were promoting
Goryeo makeup. Choi Ji Mong, giving her a meaningful look, stressed, ‘Nothing is ever a coincidence’. Does
it mean that everything happens for a reason? It may be inexplicable, but
strange things that occur are meant to happen. He elaborated, ‘Things only return to their original
place.’ Hae Soo had returned to the place where she belonged, though not
through reincarnation.
When the young lady, on impulse, promoted the Bulgarian rose oil to
the Choi Ji Mong, visions of the Bulgarian rose perfume that Baek Ah had
gifted her for her birthday flashed across her mind. It was also the special day
that Wang So had invited her to meet him at the prayer tower.
Go Ha Jin claimed that modern men also use lots of the BB cream that was being promoted. It was similar to the one used in the Goryeo era. The ‘blemish balm’ cream was a combination of products - moisturizer, foundation, skin treatment and concealer. At that moment, images of Wang So crowded her mind, and she felt distracted and ill.   
One day, she spotted an exhibition on Goryeon history. She was
drawn to some intriguing images and was mortified when it dawned on her that
all her year-long dreams and nightmares about Gwangjong and Goryeo were actually
her real experiences in another life. All the pieces of the puzzling dream of
Gwangjong seemed to have fallen into place. Hae Soo must have felt horrible
about breaking his heart; she also regretted the terrible carnage that had
occurred after she left the Cheondeokjeon palace. Tears of pain welled up in
her eyes.
Hae Soo, in her dying breath, had emphasized that she did not
want to remember Goryeo and the Wang princes but Go Ha Jin could not escape her 10th
century memories after she was transported back to the 21st
century.
  
It seemed that Gwangjong had descended into paranoia when dealing
with enemies that lurked in every corner of his empire. The question on
everybody’s lips is, ‘Did Gwangjong
turn out be a bloody tyrant who carried out a purge against the nobility or
was he just squashing rebellious forces who were against his reforms?’
The audience is allowed teasing glimpses of a 21st century man who looked like Wang So. But, the two did not cross paths. To the great disappointment of the audience, Gwangjong and Hae Soo’s romance did not continue in the 21st century. Never the twain shall meet. 'Love that transcends time and space'. Is that possible?
Although there is a joyful closing shot of Gwangjong carrying Hae Soo piggyback-style in the last segment of the drama, it cannot fill the emotional vacuum left by the poignant ending of the drama.
The audience who have watched the drama are in perfect agreement
that Lee Joon Gi has given the performance of a lifetime in Moon Lovers: Scarlet
Heart Ryeo. He has played Wang So / Gwangjong, the heart and soul of the
drama, to perfection and no viewer would or could forget Wang So in a hurry. Neither
could they forget the Wang So-Hae Soo romance, which seemed to be permanently
imprinted in the viewer’s head. It is unsurprising that the viewers share a
deep emotional connection with the drama and their emotions had been
excavated to the point that they would never be satisfied unless they watch
the sequel, which hopefully would be forthcoming.
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